WATERWISEby Joel Orff
($14.95,
Alternative Comics,
Joel Orff)
Reviewed by Heath RowI'm pretty sure this is my first exposure to the work of Joel Orff, and I think he may be my new favorite comics maker. The heavily inked, black-and-white, 132-page, squarebound book is absolutely beautiful. Resonant and redolent with the sights and sounds of summer — fireflies, crickets, and train whistles in the distance — the book is a quiet meditation on dreams and dreams deferred. A young artist without "any marketable skills" hitchhikes to his family's lakeside cabin, where he encounters a long-lost friend. Reconnecting over recent separations and memories of childhood, the two share a borderline romantic evening as adults. The book is full of moments: the eight-page drawing sequence, the rules of hitchhiking dialogue, the stretch on p. 30, the two-page canal fantasy, stepping into the water on p. 59, the spread entering the high grass, the birds on p. 100, and the badminton sequence. Wonderful and well worth reading.
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